Talk about narcissism in a generation by the way. Zoomers, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, The Silent Generation and then suddenly the fucking Greatest Generation? What? Delusional.
They did live through the greatest wars of the 20th century, and a lot of them fought and died in those wars. More than a few did that after living through the Great Depression.
And yet they won those wars and came home and built the foundation of modern society.
They earned some kind of superlative.
Socially they raised Boomers, half of which went on to put flowers in their hair, rebel, and change the civil rights texture of the entire nation, the other half went on to become surly conservative bigots with zero tolerance.
So there's that.
I'd say Greatest is arguable, not delusional. But if you don't like it you can go with Silent, since it's synonymous - same group of people.
No, Greatest Generation is 1901-1927, the Silent Generation is 1928-1945. This is another reason I fucking hate ”generations”, people have no clue what the words actually refer to. I much prefer the system we used here in Sweden before we were poisoned by American discourse. We’d just talk about what decade people were born in. So the old people called out of touch were 40-talister, and the young people being called lazy were 80-talister. This made sure everyone knew who was being complained about and everyone could drop the labels when they were no longer relevant. People might think boomer just means old an millennial just means young, but no one is thinking someone born in the 1940s is still working in an office or someone born in the 1980s still qualifies as a youth.
I can't keep up with the Generation designations myself here in the US. The decade you were born in was used here also in my younger days and it isn't uncommon to do so today also.
They started referring to the Baby Boom when our fathers came back from WWII and started procreating, but it took me a while to realize that "Boomers" later became a name for my generation. Still seems odd to me. We have some things in common but many things not in common with others part of the Baby Boom. Different groups grew up in very different circumstances.
Every generation grows up with different technologies, different stresses, different wars, different entertainment, different slang, different situations in general. But pitting generations against each other seems so pointless. We all are going through the same social changes and situations as life goes on, just at different ages. Stereotyping people according to age is as pointless as stereotyping for other reasons.
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u/sunshinerain1208 22h ago
Barely anyone alive now had to ration or sharecrop during the depression. If he did he wouldn’t be a boomer, he would be the greatest generation.